


Duty Demands

by DeadGaze



Series: Isn't This Enough? [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: All very proffessional, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29100438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeadGaze/pseuds/DeadGaze
Summary: Eridan reflects on the alternian empire and what he sees as it's many faults.
Series: Isn't This Enough? [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2116983
Kudos: 2





	Duty Demands

Eridan Ampora had been the officially appointed orphaner for Feferi Peixes and her lusus Gl'bgolyb, for the last 4 sweeps. It was a duty he took no pride in, for the grim portents of what Gl’bgolyb could do to the troll race made it nothing short of a necessity yet the process of killing another trolls lusus had been streamlined and simplified with the rise of the young heiress to the throne. It was no less a difficult weight to bear on one’s consciousness. He was the one responsible for killing and shipping the bloody carcasses of dead lusii to Gl’bgolyb, this meant he killed the lusus personally and incorporated a vast and well trained team of professional trolls to transport the carcass to Gl’bgolyb. 

Gone were the days of alternian based lusus hunting. Gone was the role of a young orphaner meant to aid in the feeding of Gl’bgolyb, now the empress took care of her lusus personally, while at the same time ruling the expansive troll empire from her seat of power. It was a fairer approach to rulership than the previous method, but it meant that punitive measures against dissident ranks had to be carried out by a more diverse fleet no longer relying on a specialized navy, it was larger, and each ship was designed to carry out multiple tasks, gone to were the days of helmsman, psionic space travel was now a process carried out by volunteer psionics that were paid a handsome salary to carry out a job that required immense strain in order to carry out a task that used to be more efficient, and was now a labor of months. This was made possible by the shift in the troll birthing process, gone were the regulations that stated a trolls genetic slurry was mandatorily collected each month, nowadays there were enough trolls and enough slurry per colony to fuel the troll reproductive cycle many times over, and so there were now dozens of mother grubs all producing generation after generation of trolls each sweep fueling the navies with psionic power and the armies with soldiers. It was a system that worked off of the backs of billions of working trolls, meant to allow for any troll to seek out a life that would not only better themselves, but better the rest of troll society. In practice however, no system would ever prove to meet the exacting pressures under which a galactic empire demanded. Many cited the primary flaw being the autocratic nature of a monarchy, but the empress responded to that by introducing regional powers across the galaxy, favoring those that were best suited to managing vast affairs. It was a sort of feudal system, with many miniature empires consisting of star systems all fell under the rule of the one empress, who single handedly commanded the greatest military fleet in all of the galaxy. “To keep order.” She would reason to herself. Even under the scrutiny of an entire galaxy that criticized her every action beyond any reasonable metric. She had to be the strongest, or else the empire would crumble, and war would reign as the only ruling power. She had to remain the most powerful, so that none could dare to upset her delicate grasp on power. She was a giving empress. Happy to provide for any troll who’s plight begged the attention of higher powers. Under her reign medicine had risen to incredible heights of advancement, more so than any other field of technology. To the point that it had been called into question many times if it was even necessary for natural born trolls to serve in the military when a vat grown troll could be made to precise specifications, such that they were deemed more efficient than natural born trolls. However, the empress was torn on the ethicality of birthing a creature for the purpose of war. Even if the creature was purpose built for it and driven by a sole pursuit in the field. It was a question she would ponder for sweeps if permitted. Eridan had grown a little tired of his empresses’ decision paralysis. 

Not to be misunderstood, he was happy with Feferi as an empress, the problem was that she refused to do anything to advance the species in any way that wasn’t directly tied to saving lives and producing more trolls. Feferi’s policy on troll life seemed to be that the answer was that there should be more of it. She put trolls first, because she believed that trolls were the only form of life with the intelligence to make their own decisions and understand the consequences of their actions. Short of the culling she used to do when she was young she now held all of troll society in a grasp of steel through military might rather than wrought iron. But the military life had grown stale. There were no enemies to fight, and incompetence seemed to be a chronic issue these days. The only sort of conflict that they faced was routine and simplistic. A riot here, and a dissident uprising there, rarely well equipped enough to face off against the raw might of the alternian navy. Hell the most damage they did was always isolated to singular planets for the most part. Even though they had the capacity to communicate across galaxies trolls seemed content to keep most of their contact within a solar system. This meant that even the most radical of groups to form and sail the cosmos was composed of only some 1000 souls. Hardly worth the full military potential of the alternian navies untold billions. Though if he recalled that wasn’t entirely true either. Last he checked they had leveled out around the 392 billion mark, as hiring more land soldiers would be taxing and with so little in the way of threats there was little need for a larger military. Something that Eridan could make peace with. What he couldn’t stand however, was that the people of the alternian empire were growing complacent. It hadn’t even been a full 5 sweeps since Feferi took power and already people had set themselves in their ways. He was used to the times when competition was the only way to survive on alternia, but now there was nothing even slightly reminiscent of the way he grew up. It was much more peaceful now, and it drove him nuts. Trolls still died every day, but it was on a completely different scale and for different reasons. They had started to run into the problem of food supplies. There were now so many trolls, that feeding them all was becoming something of an impossible burden. Some planets had been reduced to half rations for almost a sweep now, and that was no way for any troll to live. Feferi’s solution was simple. There needed to be more food to go around, and better ways of getting it to do so. This meant that preservatives had become something of a necessity in troll diets. And that living close to an agricultural world meant you had the pick of the crop. Making for a great deal of imbalance in the way of food. Feferi tried her hardest to lessen these imbalances, by limiting the amount of food that a planet was entitled to by its population, and making certain that grocers kept track of how much of their produce was going to waste.

It was a complicated issue. One that just kept getting more so complicated as the days went on. Eridan had a simple solution to the problem. Fewer trolls. Feferi dismissed the idea out of hand. It went against her principles she would say. However Eridan knew that the way they had been expanding for the last 4 sweeps was unsustainable. He also knew that he hated the status quo that Feferi had seen enforced for so long. It was time something changed. It was the orphaner’s responsibility to provide food to the eldritch horror that held the fate of all troll kind in the balance. He already killed something in the hundreds of lusii every sweep, so too did he kill trolls that refused to be ruled. He wasn’t a fool however, he knew that he couldn’t just go about killing trolls all willy nilly. He needed a plan, one that would involve billions of trolls and would not jeopardize his position of power and influence as one of the empresses seconds in command. He had just the thing too.


End file.
